Stories from The Wasteland
by Newclear
Summary: This story requires sufficent knowledge of quests and NPCs from Fallout 3.
1. Chapter 1

Stories from the Wasteland

Javin wandered through the wasteland, his dog at his side. He could remember his original objective for leaving The Vault…

But his father could wait.

He had encountered a few raiders on the way to Arefu, and since then, he'd made it his personal mission to utter anhilate any and all raiders he met.

He hated them with a passion, and regarded them with a loathing reserved for stray dogs. The moment he had managed to create a Shiskebab only served to encourage him on his sadistic quest.

So when he met a group of three raiders as he headed east, he thanked his lucky stars, and quietly snuck upon them. He could hear them as they boasted of murdering innocents and accosting weary travelers...

It made him sick.

He traded his Shishkebab for his trusty Sniper Rifle. He had repaired and maintained it religiously, to the point that after he used it, he would use something else till he could find something to fix it with.

Your weapons were everything out here.

He took aim at carefully, steadying his aim as the sights lined up on a raider wearing Painspike armor, the moonlight casting a dull glow in everything. He pulled up the sights up the raider's head, but he would only grant him the sweet release of death only when he was satisfied.

So he aimed for his legs instead.

Sid was proud of today. The last settlement he and his buddies had raided was wiped off the map when they were done. They'd met a wastelander on their way out, and now, Sid and his gang were sifting through his belongings.

There wasn't much on him, save for some stimpaks and a worn-out hunting rifle. Kit, Sid's right hand man, had tested the gun awhile ago on a vicious dog, and it had worked pretty well. Arming themselves was a good idea these days, especially with The Wanderer out there.

They'd seen the bodies of his victims, cut up and burned, as if he set them alight. And they were the lucky ones. The others were left alive, after he had cut off their legs with the flaming sword he always had on him. They moaned in agony, and some of them had their eyes put out.

They had them in their mouth.

Frankly, when they heard the stories, they were scared shitless.

So when they hear the loud bang from somewhere behind Sid, they knew that the shit just got real. Sid was halfway between turning around when his left leg exploded into a cloud of blood and gristle shin down. He collapsed onto the ground, screaming about his leg.

Kit and Trish, the two people who formed Sid's three-man band, pulled out their weapons. Trish pulled out a baseball bat, intent on bludgeoning their assailant, while Kit pulled out the Wastelander's worn-out rifle.

Within seconds of Kit arming himself, he heard two shots, and the rifle violently flew out of his hands. Unarmed, he had to pull out his ace in the hole. Trish had almost reached him when a small line of fire appeared behind a busted car.

_Of course_, he thought._ Who_ _else could shoot a rifle out of your hands_?

The Wanderer stood up, and aimed a mighty swing towards Trish. She had managed to block it, and a few others before the bat, already weakened from months of abuse and misuse, was cut in half crosswise. The thicker top half dropped to the ground, leaving Trish open. The Wanderer swung toward her, and instinctively she raised her arms to defend herself. He muttered something that sounded to Kit a lot like, "BRAVE LITTLE WHORE".

The blade chopped clean through her arms and head, setting her arms, her head, and most of her upper body on fire. How it did that was an utter mystery to Kit, who had pulled out several injections of Psycho from his Sadist armor. His terrified gulps of air had fogged over the goggles on his Psycho-tic Helmet, and all he saw was a blurry line of brightness in the dark night. He pumped himself full of Psycho, and felt the drugs course through him like a flood of rage in his blood. He gave a roar of defiance, and rushed toward him. He made a beeline to the blurry line of light.

He pulled his arm back for a punch, and saw the line of light descend. In his run, cold air entered his Helmet, the condensation on his helmet's goggles had cleared, and he got a good look at The Wanderer in the drug-and-adrenaline induced slo-mo.

The Wanderer wore a worn brown duster, like in those Wild West films. He even had the goofy hat those cowboys wore.

He had a handsome face, if only slightly so, while a glimpse of white hair showed under his hat, which in the odd sense of time the mind drunk on adrenaline acquires, The Wanderer looked no older than 19 years old. The shades he wore gave him an odd, inhuman appearance. But what sealed the deal, was the slasher smile. The Wanderer's face was set in the creepiest, widest smile he had ever seen, and Kit had the strange and unsettling feeling that he was smiling _at _him.

In his right hand was the Burner, as the other Raiders had called it. He had it in an upswing, and in the hypersense that one gets when one is in danger, he noted that the Wanderer's hand, the one holding the burner, had an oven mitten on.

It was hilarious to Kit, but somehow, his mind couldn't process the humor, and kept on grinding out terror.

Javin watched the Raider come to him at full tilt. He swung upwards, and caught the bastard right under his chin. His momentum pushed him further into the blade, and cut his head in half from the chin up. He stood aside as the body collapsed onto the ground, the split head oozing brains and blood in a red pool.

The whole ambush took a minute and a half.

Sid was screaming slightly less now, due to the fact that he was mostly out of blood, and felt rather faint.

He could hear footsteps coming to him, and after he saw Trish and Kit get cut apart like cheese, he had no intention of dying at The Wanderer's hands.

He tried to crawl away, and suddenly felt like someone shoved a stick into his blown up leg. He turned to look, and what do you know, there _was_ a stick shoved up into his leg. And a few inches a away was the Wanderer, squatting down beside his left leg.

"Please man, I don't wanna die…"

The Wanderer's eyes, or rather his shades, gleamed malevolently.

"IF YOU DIDN'T WANT TO DIE THEN YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE BECOME A RAIDER."

And without warning grabbed another stick, and shoved it into the leg again, right next to the other one. Sid screamed in pain. The Wanderer then stood up, walked over to the end of the two stick, which were about as thick as half a man's wrist. He nudged his boot in between them, forcing them apart. Sid screamed till his vision was filled with red. He couldn't feel anything but pain anymore. His mind was filled with nothing but screaming.

"NOW, TELL ME WHERE YOUR BASE IS." said The Wanderer, pulling out his boot. The sticks had separated most of the muscles on Sid's leg from the bone, leaving a red stain on the bone.

Sid, half-mad with pain, managed to gibber incoherently.

"G-Gwuh…E-eve…Evergree…Mill…" drool dripped from his mouth as pain replaced any coherent thought, or verbal skills he had.

"GOOD, THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION." He then aimed a kick in between the sticks, and lodged his boot in between them.

Sid screamed till his voice grew hoarse, till the night was filled with his inhuman screams of pain, till The Wanderer pushed his boot in deeper, pulled out his Scoped .44 Magnum, and shot his head, sending bits of brain and Mohawk flying a few feet in all directions.

And The Wanderer smiled the whole time.

_Another evildoer falls under the heel of Justice_, Javin thought as a thin sliver of blood dripped from the corner of the raider's mouth. Scum such as him should not be permitted to walk this blighted earth. He had heard of like-minded fellows somewhere in the Wasteland, restoring order into these riotous lands.

He cut off the Raiders' fingers, and deposited them in a bag. The 3 Fingers joined the 16 other Fingers in his bag. Satisfied, The Wanderer shut his bag, and set off for East. He had passed the Potomac River before hand, and he was excited at the prospect of finding new lands to discover, new people to help…

More evildoers to kill.

The Wasteland will be safe for the innocent.


	2. Chapter 2

Stories from The Wasteland

_Goddamn._

Javin sat on the river's edge, looking dejectedly at the water. The raider he had been chasing (he had run out of bullets) had dived into the river in a desperate effort to escape. Now, every human being, living or mostly dead, knows that the River is so full of radiation it fucking _glows_. No one crosses it unless you really, _really _have to, like if your lovely hunting rifle somehow washed up onto the other shore without your knowledge, or, in this case, the most feared bad-ass in the entire goddamn Wasteland is on your ass.

So when the raider dove into the river, a small part at the back Javin's mind congratulated him on being so terrifying that Raiders would rather be boiled from the inside out by radiation than face him.

Then, out of the murky depths, a Mirelurk managed to rip said Raider to bloody little pieces. Now, this was a situation for Javin, who usually had two choices when it came to Raiders: Kill them straight away, or enjoy some schadenfreude as the Raider begs for the sweet release of death. Now, the Mirelurk had stolen his kill. By all accounts, Javin was quite intelligent, which, on a scale of 1-10, he would be an 8, and he knew that less gifted men than he would simply leave and find some more Raiders, of which there was an endless supply.

But then they'd say he was getting soft.

He pulled out a large bottle of Rad-X, unscrewed the cap, and chugged those buggers down. He was glad this stuff was non-addictive. He needed his mind clear for what he planned to do.

He pulled out a baseball bat, shed the duster he picked off of Ol' Lucas Simms after Mr. Burke pulled off a rather obvious backstab, to which Javin responded with a good ol' bat-to-the-face. He even got Burke's rather excellent hat out of the deal.

He lay down the hat that came with Ol' Simms' gear, removed his shirt, and set off running into the river. The splashes had alerted the Mirelurk, who was quite busy with his (its?) Raider sandwich, who then delighted at another shell-less fleshy to have as a chaser. The surprise it felt when a large piece of wood was slammed into its (his?) face with surprising force suddenly made it reconsider eating a shell-less fleshy. Another hit into it's (dammit, I'm going with its) flat face, and it began to deeply consider why it had even left his cool, soft mud hole. The third hit made it wonder why its arms wouldn't move. After the fourth, reconsidering its current predicament was the last of its worries, as it was now in whatever Afterlife these overgrown crabs believed in.

_Probably a castle made out of bubbles somewhere under the ocean, where they sing, dance, andswim in little circles around it,_ he thought to himself, remembering something he had wanted to tell Moira back at Craterside Supply.

Javin stood over the Mirelurk, its face bashed into something that resembled a greenish-crap colored soup. He gave its inert form an experimental nudge with the tip of his baseball bat.

Its arms jerked up for a moment, earning the corpse several savage hits with a baseball bat. When Javin realized that it was merely a reflex action, he laughed nervously, and hoped no one saw his knee-jerk reaction. If the Raiders had realized that The Wastelands fuckin' huge insects, or anything remotely insectoid for that matter, freaked the living crap out of The Wanderer, they'd have a field day, and they'll start losing respect for him. He was the Grim fucking Reaper out here, and if the Raiders had lost that fear…

They start getting ballsy. They start seeing him not as an immovable monolith of killing and death, but as some lost kid scared shitless of bugs.

He searched through the bashed-in carapace of the Mirelurk, putting such thoughts out of his mind, and pulled off some strips of Mirelurk meat.

It wasn't Diner-quality food, but Diner food sucked anyway, or at least, the Diner-ish food from the Vault did.

As he put on his clothes, he cast back to his tenth birthday, when life was still blissful, when ignorance was still a blessing instead of a bane.

After getting dressed, he sat on the river's edge a few feet away from the Mirelurk corpse, and watched the sunset. Granted, most of the ruins blocked the sunset, but if moved just a little ways to the right…

There…that's the spot.

The way the waning light hit the land made it look like a Johnny Blimdale painting, a Pre-War painter that was called "the artist of the sun", as his paintings almost always were about landscapes drenched in sunlight at various times of day.

"GODDAMN. EVEN AFTER WE'VE NUKED THIS PLACE TO HELL, IT STILL LOOKS GORGEOUS." He said to the slightly rotting Mirelurk corpse. He'd heard stories of the Wasteland from his father, who was surprisingly knowledgeable on the subject, even though he had supposedly never left the Vault…

..a fact that was recently made fiction by Moriarty, an Irishman with a hilariously bad Irish accent. He stated that he and his father had entered the Vault when he was just a baby. It had apparently been open before, but had been closed…till now, anyway.

"BUT THAT'S NOT POSSIBLE. THE VAULT'S BEEN SHUT FOR 200 YEARS…" he muttered to the corpse, who had begun to attract flies. Normal-sized flies.

For now.

The Irishman laughed heartily at him, and told him of the extensive subliminal brainwashing that was done inside the Vault. He'd wanted to slap the Irish bastard upside the head. That laugh was getting to him.

"ALL HAIL THE OVERSEER AND WHATNOT…" he recalled Moriarty saying.

But eventually, he had agreed to divulge information on his father's whereabouts, for the steep price of one hundred caps. Only self control, the fact that he had information about my father, and that all Javin had was a 10mm Pistol kept him from blowing Moriarty's head off. He had changed the topic for a moment, to try and calculate if he could sell his junk for 100 caps, and when he got back to the topic of information, the cost had tripled.

Moriarty gave this weak-ass excuse for adding 200 caps to the asking price, and Javin swore to high heaven that when the time came, when he had enough weaponry to start a small war, he would walk into Moriarty's saloon, tell everyone to get the fuck out, and proceed to fuck. his. shit. up.

He let the mental image sit in his head for a while, him banging Moriarty's skull onto the bar, breaking his fingers, blowing off various extremities…

He snapped back to reality when he heard a buzzing noise behind him. He knew it was just a matter of time before one of them came.

He turned around, picked up his Combat Shotgun, one of many guns he had managed to pry from the Raiders' cold dead fingers, and pointed it over his shoulder. He pulled the trigger, and a sound not unlike a balloon popping followed. He turned, and saw the exploded remains of a Bloatfly.

It had been drawn to the Mirelurk carcass, like its smaller kin. Of course, that essentially made it a giant floating target, as it was only able to keep its bloated body a few feet above the ground, and only the fact that most Wasteland critters didn 't have guns kept the damn things from dying out.

Javin gave it another blast for good measure, added Bloatflies to the things the world needed less of, and once more began to head east.


	3. Chapter 3

Stories from the Wasteland

Javin had been walking for 6 days headed east, when he spied a blotch on the heat-baked horizon.

_Could it be?_

He squinted against the Wasteland glare, and managed to make out a small town a miles away, and in its center, a hazy shape that appeared to be holding, of all things…_a goddamn sno-cone_.

He ran the numbers through his head, and realized he could probably make it in an hour. He tried to look up at the sun, which hung high above him, pooling his shadow around his feet. The intense sunlight bleached everything bone-white. The light burned into his eyes, and he spent a few seconds waiting for the black spot the sun seared into his eyes to vanish.

He was dehydrated, tired, and hungry. You know what the worst part was?

He was bored.

He hadn't encountered any Raiders dumb or suicidal enough to attack him. He hadn't shot at anything since morning, save for a mole rat which offered him no satisfaction, and his trigger finger was getting itchy. He had blasted at a few trees, but…

"IT'S JUST NOT THE SAME." he sighed into the desert heat. He pinned his eyes onto the wavy blotch on the horizon, and resolutely began to walk towards it.

Grouse was filing his fingernails with an almost religious focus under an improvised umbrella, when the sound of crunching gravel broke him from his concentration.

He looked up, and saw, of all things, a Western Sheriff, badge and all, standing in front of him.

"Well I'll be goddamn." He said, placing the file down on the sandbags he used as a makeshift table.

"Lookie here boys, we got us an honest-to-God sheriff out here."

The stranger made no reply, which egged Grouse on further.

"Well, tex, what brings you here to the lovely Paradise Falls?"

The stranger seemed to perk up as he spoke the compound's name, and after a few tense minutes Grouse spent trying to decide whether the stranger was packing heat or not, the stranger spoke.

"THIS IS WHERE THE SLAVERS STAY, NO?" said a voice that sounded like lead being ground together.

"Pretty much. If you want to get a slave, this is the place." said Grouse, his hand slowly relaxing from its tensed hover over his 10mm pistol.

_He's just a customer, nothing more... _he thought to himself.

"I WANT TO GET IN." said the stranger in a way that meant that it was a statement, not a request.

"Look pal, I don't let people in unless they got some mean cred out here in the Wasteland, and seeing as I don't know who the fuck you are, that means you ain't got the rep to get into Paradise Falls."

Grouse had no idea how the stranger did it, but after a few minutes of talking to him, he was now escorting the stranger around Paradise Falls like he was a goddamn VIP.

The man spoke like he had the tongue of angels.

The Wanderer took in the sight of the Slaver compound, seeing everything. Various junk and trash lay in heaps along the path where he and Grouse walked. There were bullet holes and bloodstains on the rusty corrugated metal walls. The buildings contained within appeared to be undamaged, while some had been completely destroyed.

The slavers themselves did not miss his prying eyes. They were a battle-hardened bunch, all with their weapons on display. There were male and female slavers, and it had almost made him lose faith in women. As he walked to what appeared to be the central building of this hellhole, he heard whispers of  
"You don't belong here…" and "if you do anything stupid, you go straight to the Box."

Which was one of those Preservation pods, apparently. And in no way did the Wanderer perceive it as a box.

"Alright. This is Eulogy's Pad. You go in there, you deal your cards right, and you walk out with a slave." said Grouse, breaking The Wanderer's musings.

"Just so you know…" he said, stopping The Wanderer from entering.

"I hear one gunshot in there, just one, even if I think you turn off the safety, you are gonna have a fuckton of Slavers on your ass, and all of us are carrying more heat than you will ever have in your entire, short, stupid existence…" He said as he leaned in close, his shit breath wafting over The Wanderer's impassive features.

"Got that?"

The Wanderer looked at him, and as if an unspoken agreement was reached, Grouse let him in.

Opulent is a word used to describe something richly and ornately decorated. To someone who had lived in a prefabricated Vault for most of his natural life, opulent was not the word The Wanderer used to describe Eulogy's pad…

To him, opulent was putting it mildly.

The pad's ground floor consisted of two rooms as well as a staircase leading to the upper level. The first room looked like an entry area leading to the larger main room. The Wanderer walked through the anteroom, noting the knick-knacks and various pre-war books on his shelf. He kept going, and entered the larger main room, which contained a large heart-shaped bed at the center, a silver screen and a projector as well as several tables.

It was here that he found Eulogy Jones.

A lean black man was in the middle of putting on a scarlet blazer, having been done with his equally sanguine pants. He reached for his scarlet feathered hat from a nearby projector table, and stood at full height, which wasn't much, compared to the Wanderer.

"Alright, my name's Eulogy, Eulogy Jones, the leader and current proprietor of this fine establishment. Now, you must be our prospective customer. I do hope Paradise Falls can accommodate your needs." said Eulogy, drawing close to the Lone Wanderer.

"ALL I WANT…IS SOME FOOD AND WATER. I WANT NONE OF YOUR SERVICES."

Eulogy looked disappointedly at the Wanderer.

"Eh, suit yourself. The Wasteland's a pretty lonely place." he said, turning back to the woman on the bed.

She was dark-skinned, and beautiful as well, if not for the vacant stare in her eyes. The Wanderer checked her chest, which was barely covered by the skimpy nightgown she wore, and saw the tell-tale movement of respiration. For a moment, he had thought the girl was dead.

Eulogy noticed his gaze, and followed it.

"That's one of my girls, Crimson. She's completely subservient to me, and she'll protect me till death." he said with a hint of pride.

"Completely brainwashed, they won't speak to anyone without my say so. And she's off limits. She ain't for sale." He warned, his voice gaining a hint of menace.

A shape moved from one of the darker corners of the room towards them. Eulogy took notice, and turned to the shape.

"Her, on the other hand, is on the market." he said, with all the verbal flourish of a car salesman.

The Wanderer took in the newcomer. She was pretty, and she wore the same skimpy nightgown that the girl named Crimson wore. She did not have the same blank stare in her eyes however. He could see a spark of madness deep within her eyes.

"Her name's Clover, and she's one of the cray-ziest girls I've ever picked up, and that makes her a perfect bodyguard." he said, putting some emphasis on "crazy".

"She's crazy in love with anyone who holds her leash, and she'll fight to the death for him."

The Wanderer had felt like this before, when he had met Amata before the G.O.A.T., and now, he felt it again…

Attraction.

A small, meek voice piped up inside his mind.

"maybe its time we stop this evilending nonsense…the wasteland is a lonely place to walk alone. don't you want to find your father? have you forgotten him?"

But his mind was set. The small voice died away, with only the screams of justice the Wasteland screamed in his head drowning it out.

"I HAVE NO WISH TO KEEP A MANNEQUIN, NOR A BRAIN-WASHED ZOMBIE SOLDIER. I ONLY WISH TO FIND FOOD AND DRINK, NO MORE. TURN FROM YOUR WICKED WAYS, LEST I BE FORCED TO MAKE YOU." said the Wanderer, a tranquil fury hiding behind his words.

"Son, if you ain't buyin', then you're just wasting my time. Get out of here, before I call Grouse on your Wastelander ass." said Eulogy dismissively, herding Clover to the bed.

The Wanderer turned away, a hazy blackness at the edge of his vision. Pretty soon, he would be feeling weak.

The Wanderer had no time to be weak.

He walked back outside, almost walking into Grouse, who was apparently standing outside the door.

"What, no deal?" he said as The Wanderer passed by. He saw what appeared to be a makeshift bar a few feet away, and decided to hoof it there before he left. Justice would not come to the Wasteland if he was dead.

It was when he was looking around angrily that he saw the children.

They were behind a chain-link fence that separated the camp from the make-shift slave pen. Another fence ran down the middle of the fence, separating the 3 children from the adults.

Two of them were boys, both of them at least 10 years old. One was wearing a Wasteland Scouting Uniform, while the other wore Wasteland Athlete gear. The girl was dark-skinned and wore what his Pip-Boy called a Ragamuffin outfit.

In the Wanderer's mind, the Slavers had already crossed the line when they enslaved the children, but what drove him into a smoldering red haze of rage, were the slave collars on their necks.

He had seen those diabolical machines in action, when a truant slave lost his mind and tried to run for it just as he entered with Grouse. The collar had detonated, blowing the slave's head to kingdom come.

A burning rage built within him, having realized from out of his nutrient starved mind, that these Slavers had no qualms about stooping so low as to enslave _children._

He let the rage simmer, careful to not let it die out, to grow in intensity as he approached the bar.

There was another Slaver scum sitting there, his impressive metal armor seemingly doing little to hamper his movements. On his back was a massive Super Sledge. He was involved in a heated argument with the bartender, who looked like he wanted to cease existing.

He took a stool in front of the bar, and sat down. After a few moments, the Slaver with the Super Sledge decided to talk.

"Hey pussy, don't you know this is a Slavers-only bar?" said the Slaver, whose name was Ymir.

"THAT'S FUNNY, BECAUSE I THOUGHT THIS WAS A HUMANS-ONLY BAR. I DIDN'T THINK THEY ALLOWED GORILLAS TO DOWN A FEW SHOTS." replied The Wanderer, his mind still burning with rage.

_They have children here…as slaves…_ his mind worked overtime providing him with several outcomes for those children, and they weren't set free in any of them.

Of course, that could be arranged…

A few Slavers stopped what they were doing and looked to the Food Section. The bartender, who had been harassed by Ymir just a few seconds ago, decided not to press his luck and got the fuck out of there to a reasonably safe distance.

Ymir had stood from his seat, his Super Sledge gripped in his hand. Now, the Super Sledge is quite a large hammer, intimidating by itself. But in the hands of a very large bald bearded man in full battle armor who happened to look like a goddamn Viking, the effect was truly terrifying.

The Wanderer simply sat there, waiting for the bartender to stop dicking around.

"You insultin' my intelligence, boy?" asked Ymir threateningly, his grip on the Super Sledge tightening.

The Wanderer was silent.

"You know who I am? I'm fuckin' Ymir, the baddest Slaver in Paradise Falls." he said proudly.

"I AM THE WANDERER, THE DEATH OF ALL THAT DO EVIL."

He stood up, grabbed his barstool in both hands, and slammed it into Ymir's face like he wanted to take his head off. He heard a satisfying crack when it hit.

Ymir staggered back, the right side of his face both numb and bleeding. He roared in pain and in anger, and charged at The Wanderer, who chucked the barstool into Ymir's face.

It sent him sprawling onto the ground, unconscious.

"OH NO, YOU'RE NOT GOING DOWN THAT EASILY…" said the Wanderer, as he picked up the Super Sledge, and brought it crashing onto Ymir's legs.

The scream echoed through the Wasteland.

The Slavers, stunned that anyone would have the gall to attack, let alone kill one of them, had managed to shake off the shock, and made for their weapons.

The Wanderer whipped out his trusty Hunting Rifle, which had been modified endlessly to keep it in tip-top shape. The Wanderer had placed a firm belief in the saying, "take care of your friends, they take care of you..."

It just so happens that his friends spit bullets.

He shot the Slavers' guns out of their hands, and when they tried to go Melee, he shot their legs off.

All the while, a crazed grin stuck itself on the Wanderer's face, and did not leave till the last Slaver was dead.

Squirrel thought he would've enjoyed it. He watched the massacre from behind the chain-link fence, and thanked whatever deity he could think of that the mad mungo was on the other side. Sammy had curled up into a ball with his hands in his ears and his eyes squeezed tight. Penny was facing the wall, flinching when a Slaver screamed. But Squirrel couldn't tear his eyes away from the bloodbath.

He'd seen some awful things back when he was with the scav team out in the Wasteland, but this…this…_demon_… used a barstool and a gun in ways the human body was not meant to experience. He managed to get them in places a barstool and a gun had no place in being.

And the screams…they were the worst part.

To say they died screaming would've been an understatement.

After a while, it was all too much for Squirrel, and he collapsed. The Slavers' screams were his lullaby.

When he woke, the screaming had stopped. All was quiet, and a shadow loomed over him. He opened his eyes, and saw the Mad Mungo, standing above him.

He quickly scrabbled away from him, afraid of what he was capable of doing. He searched the pen for any sign of Penny or Sammy…and found none.

A hand grabbed his foot, and yanked him back. He screamed as his hands struggled for purchase on the rocky ground, but only pulled at gravel.

He felt himself being twisted off his belly and onto his back, facing the Mad Mungo. And to his surprise, there was no demonic face under the sheriff's hat, only a stoic-looking, clean shaven fellow in eyeglasses. What little Squirrel could see of the Mad Mungo's hair was apparently white.

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING SCREAMING LIKE THAT?" asked the Mad Mungo, his blue eyes half-shut from exhaustion.

"I-I…I thought y-you were gonna…"

"WHAT…KILL YOU? I AM THE LONE WANDERER, I PROTECT THE INNOCENT, AND ALL EVILDOERS WILL SUFFER UNDER MY HAND. I DO NOT HARM CHILDREN. YOU ARE STILL INNOCENT, AND THEREFORE SPARED OF MY RIGHTEOUS VENGEANCE." said the Wanderer, in a voice that sounded like grinding ice.

Squirrel looked around. He had passed-out at the foot of the fence inside the slave pen, and he could see the utter devastation that had occurred outside. He still saw no sign of Sammy or Penny.

"W-What about the other two kids in here with me? What did you do to them?"

The Wanderer laughed a cold, grating laugh that sent chills up Squirrel's spine.

"IS THAT WHAT IT WILL TAKE TO CONVINCE YOU THAT I BEAR YOU NO ILL WILL? THAT I DO NOT WISH TO HARM YOU? FINE THEN, SO BE IT."

The Wanderer looked over his shoulder, and gestured to someone behind him. A boy and a girl walked over to either side of him, and the girl looked like she'd been crying.

"Sammy! Penny!" said Squirrel with joy. He leapt up from the ground, and caught Sammy in a bear hug, and he ran to Penny next, and gave her a hug.

"What's wrong Penny?" he asked her, noticing her wet eyes.

"THE KID'S FRIEND, THE GUY IN THE BOX, HAD BEEN DEAD FOR A FEW DAYS. SHE WANTED ME TO RESCUE HIM, BUT I CAN'T BRING BACK THE DEAD." The Wanderer shrugged.

"It's okay Penny…really." said Squirrel reassuringly, holding her in his arms, and feeling something very odd in the back of his mind.

"Thank you mungo, I've been trying to figure out a way to get out of here, but if you hadn't come along, we could've been sold to some godforsaken land a lot worse than here." said Squirrel thankfully, letting go of Penny.

"If there's anything we can do…"

The Wanderer suddenly perked up. He knelt down to Squirrel, and placed a hand on his shoulder.

"IF YOU WANT TO REPAY ME, THEN DO EXACTLY AS I SAY. WHEN YOU LEAVE THIS SLAVE PEN, YOU WILL NOT LOOK BACK. YOU WILL KEEP GOING TILL YOU GET OUT OF PARADISE FALLS. I WANT YOU TO LEAVE THIS PLACE BEHIND, AND NEVER LOOK BACK. IF YOU LOOK BACK, I WILL PUT A BULLET BETWEEN YOUR EYES. TELL THOSE YOU MEET OF HOW YOU WERE FREED…THAT THE LONE WANDERER PROTECTS THE INNOCENT, AND PUNISHES THOSE WHO DO EVIL…THAT IS HOW YOU MAY THANK ME."

Squirrel gave a nod, and in return, he received a smile from the Wanderer. Not a smile fueled by bloodlust, but one of genuine happiness.

He stood up, and reached inside his Sheriff's coat. Squirrel involuntarily flinched when he pulled out a gun. It was a Scoped .44 Magnum, and the Wanderer held it out to him.

"TAKE IT, SO YOU MAY PROTECT THOSE WHO ARE IMPORTANT TO YOU…NOW GO."

Squirrel grabbed the gun, took one last look at the Wanderer, and ran out of the slave pen, with Penny and Sammy on his trail. They ignored the carnage that The Wanderer had left behind when he annihilated the Slavers.

Squirrel followed the Wanderer's orders, because besides the threat of having a third breather-hole slightly above the other two, he knew enough not to look back. Either the Wanderer would be there, trying to find a way out that wouldn't let him be seen by the children, which would be disappointing, or he would've mysteriously disappeared, which would be totally awesome.

But he remained steadfast, and did not look back at the Wanderer, who had actually gone back inside Eulogy's place to pick up his snazzy red hat.


End file.
